Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Light Fantastic
by Jeffrey Lang
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Published: 2014 Acquired: December 2020 Read: January 2023 |
Cold Equations brought Data back to life, of course, but one of my big complaints about that trilogy was that it actually didn't really do much with him as a character. Data was rarely a viewpoint character, and when he was, things were usually plot focused. It was hard for me to tally this coldly Lal-obsessed person with the inquisitive, friendly android we'd known before he died. I'm pleased to say that one of the big strengths of The Light Fantastic is how it joins the dots here and makes this work. Data has permanent emotions now, and he is still learning how to handle them, and not altogether certain about how to express them. The book really benefits from pairing him with Geordi La Forge, who as Data's best friend, can both empathize with him and call him out when he's going into dark places.
The main plot of the book is that Professor Moriarty, confined to the Daystrom Institute in a memory module with the Countess Regina, has figured out a way to reach out of his prison—and now he wants a real body so he can really explore the universe, as he was promised by Picard and Data. Since Cold Equations, Data and Lal have settled down on Orion Prime, where Data manages his father's casino (among other things) while Lal explores her newfound life. Moriarty kidnaps Lal to force Data to assist him, and so Data and La Forge travel the galaxy, looking both for clues as to where Moriarty is and for leads on what can give him a real body.
Like Immortal Coil, it loops in a number of previous Star Trek stories about AI: most notably this time, "I, Mudd," "The Most Toys," "What Are Little Girls Made Of?", and most notably "Elementary, Dear Data" and "Ship in a Bottle." Plus, it features appearances by Star Trek's two other most famous holograms, Voyager's Doctor and Deep Space Nine's Vic Fontaine. In the abstract, there's a real danger that this kind of thing could feel gratuitous, but I think the novel just about gets away with it. Each of the returns comes across as a natural extension of what we've seen so far, and serves to deepen the novel's exploration of what kind of rights one has to exist when one is "merely" a program. I liked the return of Kivas Fajo, for example, and Alice—one of the Mudd androids—is probably the novel's best original character. The one thing I would cut is that the conversations with Vic and the Doctor felt redundant; we probably could have done just fine with only one of them.
Lang's novel feels like an actual novel, not an ersatz tv episode; it jumps around in time and focuses on the characters and their thoughts, not the actions. I really enjoyed the story of Moriarty and his growing disillusionment with the universe. His is a tragic tale, and he ultimately makes a strong antagonist. The story of Alice and Mudd is good, as I said. The character of Albert Lee is a fun one, though I did have to look him up to see if he was from a TNG episode I'd missed! I enjoyed Data here, though I still occasionally found him off-puttingly strange. I like, for example, him posing as a fry cook and him struggling to work out parenthood, but his single-minded ruthlessness as a parent didn't always ring true. I get characters in the novels have to evolve beyond what we see on screen, but there's a balance to keep in that they also have to feel like those screen characters, and I think Lang got this most of the time, but not all. That said, La Forge calls him out on some of it near the end, and that helped me.
The weak point of the novel is the ending, which is abrupt. I didn't totally get where Moriarty was / where he had brought Lal and Alice to, and Data's deception of him seemed surprisingly easy. I did like, on the other hand, that Moriarty ultimately didn't suffer for his decision. I did not like the way the characters cavalierly treated Alice. Given the whole book focused on the consequences of how even Data could disregard the sentience of another AI, it seemed weird for them to repeat that mistake with Alice, in allowing her to become reenslaved to Harry Mudd.
There is some fun dialogue here, and some snappy cons and heists, which I always enjoy. Lang is good at small moments that show character and don't necessarily relate to the big plot while also not feeling gratuitously wodged in because the author suddenly realized their characters should be people, like Moriarty trying not to stare at Alice's legs, or Mudd thinking he can still con Uhura. The stuff about color in Moriarty's world is a nice detail, very evocative. Kivas Fajo becoming a Data fanboy was a logical development (not so keen with what his release implies about 24th-century mental health).
It's not as good as I remember Immortal Coil being... but then, I harbor a suspicion that Immortal Coil might not be as good as I remember Immortal Coil being! I am not convinced that what I valued in Star Trek fiction in 2002 still holds true today. On the whole, though, this is fun with some interesting moments, and I am happy to see the return of Jeff Lang's voice after an eight-year gap. Unfortunately, though this book sets Data up to be his own person and even gives him a new mystery to investigate, and though Data would turn up in some more novels, he was never a main character again as far as I know. I would have liked to see where he would have gone next.
- An engineer named "Lee" is mentioned, but does not appear in, "All
Good Things..." during the 2363 flashbacks. I guess this must be Albert;
the character is really named after Jeff Lang's dog!
- There are multiple references to Indistinguishable from Magic here, a book that seemed kind of glossed over in earlier Destiny-era novels. Suddenly La Forge is in a relationship with Leah Brahms again; he thinks briefly about Tamala Harstad, but agrees with me that she's too boring to be bothered with. There's also a reference to the apparent death of Captain Scott in that novel, though Picard speculates he might return some day—as, indeed, we know he must from Engines of Destiny.
- Interestingly, the book would seem to be incompatible with basically any post-"I, Mudd" stories we've ever seen, as it establishes Harry Mudd was trapped with the androids on their planet for decades. No Mudd in Your Eye, no "The Business, as Usual, during Altercations," even no "Mudd's Passion"! This idea would be invalidated by the Short Treks episode "The Escape Artist"... at least, if you buy my arguments about that story's chronological placement!
- Vic says Miles was pretty busted up when Data died. But at that
time, O'Brien would have been living on Cardassia Prime, and nowhere
near Vic!
- Sentences no one in this book ever utters: "The galaxy is on high alert for small, fast vessels thanks to a galactic terrorism crisis. Doesn't that make your ship a bit suspicious, Mr. Data?" Hmmmmm...
- There's a weird scene at the beginning of chapter 15. The scene is captioned "Aboard the Archeus" (that's Data's ship), where Data and La Forge are, and they are comm-linked to Lee back on Earth. All of Lee's dialogue is in italics, the Star Trek fiction convention for people who are speaking on a communicator. But the scene is told from Lee's perspective, describing his thoughts and actions throughout; nothing in the scene is actually narrated from the perspective of anyone on the Archeus! It's very odd and off-putting.
I read Destiny-era Star Trek books in batches of five every
few months. Next up in sequence: Deep Space Nine: Lust's Latinum Lost (and Found) by Paula M. Block and Terry J. Erdmann
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